


This Feeling From My Bones

by SQ (proteinscollide)



Category: Bandom, Panic At The Disco
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-16
Updated: 2007-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-24 03:48:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/258629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proteinscollide/pseuds/SQ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU.  Where Spencer is Meg White.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Feeling From My Bones

“So, tell me the truth, are you two really brothers?”

The Rolling Stones guy, Brendon, strolls in saying he’s going to write an interview _about the music_ , and Spencer rolls his eyes as Ryan sits up straighter, chomping at the bit. But they all ask the same question, in the end.

Spencer smiles – well, he moves his lips upwards in a thin line and everything – and grabs Ryan’s chin like an elderly aunt would, shakes it gently. Tilts his head towards that of his exasperated bandmate and says, cocking his eyebrow in challenge, “Do you see a family resemblance?”

The interviewer just laughs, and scribbles and scribbles into the notebook perched on his lap, the awkward scramble of his skinny legs longer in those skinny jeans tucked under him. Pushes the frames of his red glasses further up his nose as he looks up slyly and sighs, “Those pretty eyes, that shiny hair.” He takes a pause to shake an imaginary 8-ball, staring at the space between his cupped palms intently before saying, “Signs say yes. These things don’t lie, you know.”

Ryan looks up then and grins, a genuine fucking beautiful smile, and stretches suddenly, the hem of his plain red t-shirt riding up to show pale skin, a sliver of belly. True to his word, the rest of the interview is spent discussing their upcoming album, the glowing reviews for their latest tour, new bands on the rock scene. Brendon taps his pen excitedly against Ryan’s knee whenever they agree, leaning forward and pursing his full lips whenever he doesn’t.

But Spencer is sure that Ryan takes the guy back to his hotel room afterwards and fucks him because of that one stupid line.

*

Ryan starts laughing hysterically when he hears the first few chords, and at the choking sound Spencer almost veers into the opposite lane, the sun in his eyes.

“Turn it up, shit, turn it up,” Ryan wheezes, and Spencer leans forward, still squinting, twisting the volume knob until it’s as high as it goes in his little car, and even then it takes a few more seconds for things to sink in and make sense.

Even a lot of their hardcore fans don’t know about the beginning, the two years Spencer remembers vividly; nights spent staring at his drum kit in the garage, waiting for Ryan to show up after another rehearsal with his real band in Brent’s cockroach infested shoebox of an apartment. Then, Spencer was more his outlet away from these guys he didn’t even seem to like, the best friend who didn’t laugh at him when he turned up after a crap day at college and just wanted to jam along to the latest Blink CD.

Three years since their eponymous album got passed around Jon Walker’s house during a drunken afterparty - a burst of rock tinged with everything Ryan could throw at it with the tiniest amount studio time they almost sold their souls for, five instruments between the two of them, and a whole lot of residual anger; two and a half years almost to the day Jon leaked the killer single onto the internet through one of the many blogs he had his friends write to promote his bands; and the two years after that, touring across American in brokedown vans and through other people’s gigs, writing their acclaimed second album on the run, and Spencer is just tired. This trip isn’t a holiday, it’s more like running away from success.

“I love coming home,” Ryan says sarcastically. He’s still listening intently to the song on the radio, a loop right back to their very start. He starts singing along in his scratchy voice when it hits the chorus, spitting back the words that got him kicked out in the first place. _Adrift and cut you loose you come my way I ain’t gonna hear what you wanna say_ , he sings, but Spencer can hear the difference coming from his speakers, the changes they made splicing Ryan’s words into their awkward rhythms and generic riffs. He hums along at the very end though, caught up in Ryan’s disdain, knowing he’ll be grateful to the end to these bastards and their shitty taste.

“We’ll be back with more one-hit wonders right after the ad-break,” the DJ back announces over the fading outro, and Ryan and Spencer collapse into giggles then.

“Do you remember - ” Spencer starts to say; the song, this car trip from the last stop on their tour back home as dictated by Ryan, it suddenly makes him long for the memories too, not just the places where they happened. He wants to say, _that Friday night when you came to me_ but in the end he just finishes, “Man, can you believe it all started with that?”

And the sun’s picking up the highlights in Ryan’s hair, the uneven spikes that Spencer originally cut jagged and shaped, rubbing the pads of his fingertips over Ryan’s skull trying to get a grip. Ryan just nods but doesn’t say a word, head tucked into his chest, maybe lost in his own memories.

*

Spencer’s happy not to sing lead, just backup and harmony, a soft voice behind Ryan’s growl, the odd flawed noise that sets them apart. He’s happy to just bang on his drums and any surfaces available, forming a menacing percussion line woven into whatever crazy idea gets into Ryan’s head. He’s happy to feel the rhythm flowing through him, watching Ryan lost in his own world, fingers flying over the fret of his guitar. Spencer’s happy doing what Ryan wants, and still it’s not enough.

“Pete’s just gonna hang out with us for a few days, got a few song ideas for us, maybe.”

Ryan squirms happily under the older guy’s arm set comfortably over his thin shoulders. Pete’s been on this tour for the last four cities, some guy Jon knows from his Chicago days. He has an entirely different sound, a pop-folk hydra with words that cut to the heart, that make the kids singalong and love him like he knows their poetry-ridden hearts. Spencer suspects when Ryan sits in on Pete’s soundcheck for New York, Washington, Atlanta; staring up with a rapt look on his face, tapping lyrics into his laptop that he doesn’t show to Spencer. He knows when Ryan brings Pete onto their tour bus with that studied casual air, free of apologies.

Ryan announces all his side projects the same way. Musical collaboration is his handy shorthand for having sex with people of musical talent that Spencer can’t ignore and can’t begrudge. It’s an entirely too efficient process, how Ryan gets to sleep around and justify it all with a musical output that keeps his name on critics’ top ten lists each year.

Spencer tries not to take these detours personally; Ryan always comes back to him, to their band.

The day the Fifth Columnist single drops, Spencer logs in to their own band site under a fake name, checks out the thread for side projects, one that keeps growing while the boards for band news gets stagnant.

 _OMG it dosent’ even sound like Ryan_ , is the first comment in the thread, followed quickly by _what the fuck has Pete Wentz been feeding Ross, IT”S TOO HAPPY goddamn it_. There’s three posts asking about the band’s name and what it means, before it snowballs all afternoon, a wave of indignation over how radio-friendly the new song is. It’s not until someone writes _I wonder what Spencer is up to now_ that Spencer logs out immediately, the tips of his ears burning, as if he’d been caught doing something wrong. Maybe he is. It’s a bitter consolation to him that Ryan sounds happy. Writing is an inverse relationship with Ryan – the better off he is, the better he sounds, the angrier his music is.

Three hours later, he logs back in and posts his opinion on the happiness to quality-of-song ratio, pretending to be some teenager from Idaho, who loves the first album for being the rawest, the most powerful. Sits back to watch the ensuing debate erupt on the boards as fans try to one-up each other with their knowledge of Ryan through his words, and Spencer is almost frightened by how close some of them get.

The really-invested fans, the ones from the beginning including one guy who swears he saw them play in the garage, agree that Ryan and Spencer will never be as good again as those first songs; and only part of that is fannish swagger, the we-were-there-first bragging. Ryan was happy, with Spencer, then.

*

They’re not really siblings, and never have been. Spence’s parents didn’t adopt Ryan either, which is the other popular interpretation on the internet. After the Rolling Stone interview, with the iconic pictures – Spencer in white, dark hair falling over his eyes, touching his drums like he touches Ryan; Ryan in red and more red, the makeup striking across his eyes; Spencer leaning in to whisper in Ryan’s ear in the dark of a club, forgetting the photographer trailing them around – some journalist hits on the smart idea of tricking a public official into showing him copies of their birth certificates, the four different parents listed. But the mythology stays, and with that some of the stigma, and moreso the attraction: the what-if, the seemingly unsullied and impossible tension between them.

“I thought we were really going to get somewhere with the band,” Ryan had said, bursting into Spencer’s room that Friday night, a storm cloud, upset and forlorn.

“I thought you said Brent’s playing was a lost cause,” Spencer had replied, sitting on his bed, back against the headboard. One drumstick in his lap, the other he’d been painstakingly twirling across his knuckles, a move he saw at the last gig he went to with Ryan, sweating it out amongst the scene kids on the floor.

There’d been a pause, as Ryan decided to not lie futilely to Spencer, admitting, “My songs were good enough, I mean. With the right people playing, maybe.” A longer pause, then Ryan had moved further up on the bed and placed his hand over Spencer’s, stilling the movement of the stick, his first successful revolution at last. “With you.”

“I can’t - ” Spencer remembers saying, reflex and panic rising in his throat. But Ryan pressed a kiss to his mouth then, dry and warm and nervous.

“You could, you will,” he’d said urgently, and the plea in his voice had given Spencer courage to return the kiss, moving closer, touching his hand to Ryan’s waist.

“So you’ll be in my band,” Ryan said later, in the dead of the night, sure of himself once more. His body tucked into the curve of Spencer’s, cool under the covers. He’d shifted, sliding closer, and Spencer had closed his eyes, seeing flares in the dark. He would’ve promised Ryan anything in that moment, followed him anywhere.

END

**Author's Note:**

> Here, have [the picture that ate my brain](http://members.optusnet.com.au/soquiet/panic/spencer_megwhite.jpg).


End file.
